Wodonga to Goulburn

Goulburn Travel Blog

The trip to Goulburn was an interesting one, and even though the scenery was nice thatâ€™s not what made it so interesting! When we stopped at Gundagai to see the dog (donâ€™t worry, if youâ€™re not Australian you are not supposed to know what Iâ€™m talking about!) we were hungry so decided to have a bite to eat at the servo (petrol station). They had this huge hall with different places to eat such as McDonalds and Subway so we had a bit of choice. The first thing we noticed were the Christmas beetles which are large shiny green beetles, which were all around the entrance. When we walked inside there were quite a few there too.

Hill

Then when we asked for a high chair for Jordan we were told they didnâ€™t have any, which was explained by the manager as a problem with insurance. The beetles were a plague and they couldnâ€™t do anything about it (hello, cleaning might help!?). No high chair made it a bit hard to feed Jordan, and because of the beetles we didnâ€™t really want to put her on the floor either and had to have her on our laps. She almost pulled my hot coffee off the table! Reagan and I got our food, (chicken nuggets for her and a deli roll from McDonalds and a free cappuccino for me), and Merv was going to get his after changing Jordanâ€™s nappy. When he went to the parentâ€™s room it turned out that the nappy changing area was basically a table which Jordan almost rolled off of so Merv went off to complain to the manager again about this and the beetles and was told the portable change mat had been stolen a few times so they werenâ€™t going to replace it any more (which is against health and safety regulations).

Dog on the Tucker Box

Merv got quite upset with the whole thing and wasnâ€™t going to spend any more money at this place, so we decided Iâ€™d take Reagan and myself to the toilet and weâ€™d leave. When I got to the toilets there were beetles everywhere and toilet paper on the floor, only one dispenser out of four had soap in it and there was water all over the wash hand basins too! There was one lady there who told me that the toilet cubicle she was in had poo all over the inside of the doorâ€¦ There were a few older ladies that were there with a bus tour and a few of them couldnâ€™t even open the door to get back out into the food court, as it had one of those door closers on it that was set too strong. After all that I was ready to put in a few complaints of my own! Merv went to talk to the owner/manager of the Subway to find out whom to put an official complaint in with and was told that the shop owners actually pay to get the toilets cleaned but it doesnâ€™t get done very often, and theyâ€™re not very happy about it.

Submarine on dry land

She actually gave us the contact details for a councillor and asked us to please put in a complaint so something might be done about it! After I went to complain to the manager with only excuses as a result: â€śwell, we clean the toilets three times a day!â€ť (theyâ€™re open 24/7, youâ€™d think it would need a bit more than that?) we got back in the car and stopped at the restaurant next door to get a few bottles of Coke, and there were no bugs to be seen anywhere! Then we took a picture of the dog on the Tuckerbox and got on our way again. We also called the councillor, who said he would follow up on it immediately.

After all that excitement the rest of the trip went pretty smoothly, and apart from the cabin being very small and having a strange cooker which I only figured out after I finished cooking we had an ok night. The next day we left for Sydney.